In fairness NPR does in fact have RSS 2.0 feeds; they're separated by section [1] -- for example, one for US News [2]. There's an 'assorted' feed [3] that doesn't exactly mirror the homepage but shares a similar purpose.
The feeds only embed a line or two from the article, and link to the regular (i.e. non-lite) site. Nonetheless, they exist; artifacts of a patchwork of optimistic thinking about the future of the web that have largely fallen out of the collective popular consciousness.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)